We begin walking up the steps leading to the police station, just as we did that night. My body is trembling and my breathing is shaky. I try to take deep calming breaths, hoping Stiles takes the lead in there. I know he will, because that's what Stiles does. He protects me in any way that he can, however he can. He opens the thick heavy wooden doors, and my breath is taken away. Raken is standing directly in front of me with the widest toothy smile he can. My spine snaps straight and I can't move. I'm stuck in the doorway not able to let Stiles through. "Hey, what's up? Everything is going to be okay, the worst they can do is ground us... and well we live together so..." His voice halts as I feel his head snap into the direction mine is in. He sees him, he places his hand on my lower back and directs me to the opposite side of him, away from Raken. His hand never leaves my body, my throat is bone dry and it physically hurts to swallow. My eyes never leave Raken's and Stiles almost has us past him, when his voice halts our movements.
"Hey guys, what're you doing here?" He says looking down to where Stiles' hand is on my back. I go to step away from Stiles, but before my body can move I decide against it. It's like my body is trained to move away, but I'm not sure why. "We're picking our parents up. Going for an early dinner outside of town. What brings you here?" He finishes while looking around. We have a solid answer as to why we're here but there's no possible reason he would come here on his own free will. "Oh, there was a bar fight or something. I got called in as a witness." His eyes never leave mine. He knows. My arms drop to my sides and I can't move, I can't breathe. He knows I've told someone... he knows I'm about to tell Andrew. He's going to kill me — or even worse, he's going to kill Stiles. "Damn dude, that sucks. Just don't say too much" Stiles laughs and swiftly leads us away from him. I begin to question everything.
Should we be doing this? They still don't know anything yet, we can back out of it. Before anyone gets hurt. What're the odds Raken is in the police station the same time we're coming to tell the police everything we know? Did I give something away when we spoke earlier? I was trying to get information out of him... and maybe he was trying to get information out of me the same way. What did I do — I ruined everything.
We're almost to my moms desk when I stop Stiles, he looks at me confused at first but then he understands. "Stiles, can we tell them we want to have dinner at some place and drive there separately? I need to think — to really think about this before we do this." He nods his head, and we take the last ten steps before we're standing in front of my mothers desk. I try to fix my demeanor and slap a smile on my face before she looks up at us. She looks up briefly and I can now see she's on the phone, she raises her pointer finger at us and we wait until she's done. "Hey guys, what's going on?" She says with a smile plastered on her face. "Hey aunt Liv, we just wanted to go to dinner with you guys. Is there any way you can both get away?" He puts his hands on her desk and leans his weight on them. She looks over her schedule and crosses a few things out, "We can go in about thirty minutes. Will that work?" She asks. "That's perfect Erin will text you the name of the restaurant, see you in a little." He says swiftly. When we make it back to the lobby Raken is gone. I walk as quickly as I can back to the jeep and Stiles doesn't waste any time by buckling me in, he just walks straight to his side and gets in.
The restaurant is forty minutes away, and I lean my head on the window, close my eyes and try to figure out what to do. Every possible outcome is racing through my brain a million miles per minute, none of them have happy endings. I open my eyes and look at the blurry buildings we're passing, each one making me more and more nauseous. I turn my head to Stiles, "Hey how much longer do you think?" He looks down at his phone and back up to the empty road in front of us, "I would say ten minutes, why are you feeling okay?" I nod my head in response and take my chances looking back out the window. My eyes focus on the side mirror and through the slight fog two bright headlights make their way closer and closer to us. I inch closer to the mirror and make out a small circular shape in the headlight before it begins to back off and we're a few minutes from pulling into the restaurant. I don't say anything about the weird vibe that just climbed its way through my entire body, and soon I see the bright neon lights against the darkened sky. Stiles pulls into a parking spot and parks, but doesn't say a word. I go over everything in my head one more time before I decide to speak. "Stiles, are we sure this is the best way to do this? I mean... Raken told me. He told me if I told anyone he would hurt you. Or someone I love, but definitely emphasized on you. I just — I can't — If something happened to you—" I stop talking in fear that I'm not making any sense. He leans over and wraps his arms tightly around me. "Baby, nothing is going to happen to me. We're going to go inside and tell our parents what we know, then we're going to go home and act like none of this ever happened. If they find her, amazing. If they don't find her... then we did everything we could to help her. I'm not sure what else we could have possibly done to help her, okay?" He kisses my forehead so tenderly I almost don't even feel it.  I nod my head multiple times not sure if I'm trying to assure him or myself at this point.

***

  Once we get inside the warmth completely surrounds me, in the most comforting way possible. Like the aura of the place is wrapping its arms around me, telling me everything was going to be okay. That we made the right decision. We're seated at a booth in the backside of the building, with only a great big window next to us. I've never been here before, or a place this nice close to our hometown. I order a water to drink, but can't stop picking at the skin around my nails. I look around the room, and it's the least busy it's probably ever been. There's one older couple in the same room as us and they seem to have been here awhile, like they're making every last bite count. Before I know it I see my mom and Andrew walking toward our table. Just the sight of them draws all of the air from my lungs. My eyes darted to Stiles and he gave me a reassuring nod, this is it. We're really doing this.
  "Hey guys!" My mom says way too enthusiastically. I give her the best smile I can muster, but not much is said as they order their drinks. My mom orders a bloody mary and Andrew orders a beer, how original. We all look over the menus and even though I don't remember the last time I ate, I'm not hungry. "Hey what're you getting?" I whisper to Stiles. He looks over the menu once more and points at a picture perfect meal. Something called 'Beef Wellington' with a side of miso garlic mashed potatoes. I nod, it looks good but also looks like a lot of food. "What about you?" I ask my mother. "Hm, I think I'm going to get the Oysters and Andrew is probably going to get the Wagyu Beef." I look from my mother to Andrew, she knows his order already? How long has this been going on? The fact that they're so open about it disturbs me... What will this mean for Stiles and I? It's not like we can date if our parents decide to marry. A shiver runs down my spine, but I try to hide it by taking a big drink of water. "I have to— go to the bathroom. Will you just order something for me? Anything, I don't really care." I say into Stiles' ear. He slides out of the booth and lets me out, and I walk around the building until I run into the restroom sign. The bathroom is just as empty as the rest of the building, I look at myself in the mirror until I can no longer stomach it. "You can do this." I whisper to myself before making my way out of the bathroom and back to the table.
  Stiles gets up and lets me slide in and for the first time I notice the food on the table. He ordered me chicken tenders, with a side of buffalo and honey mustard sauce. Something I would order at any restaurant other than this one. "You did say anything, it was on the kids menu." He whispers in my ear. I lean away from him giving him a smile that hurts my cheeks and kiss his lips softly, forgetting that we weren't alone. "So I see you guys are doing good, huh?" My mother asks while sipping on her drink. Stiles looks at me without moving his head from his plate and smirks. God why does this have to be so awkward! "So I take it you didn't ask us to clear our schedules and come to a dinner forty minutes away to talk about how great your relationship is going." Andrew says before taking a big drink of his beer. The feeling is back and I feel like I'm going to pass out, the once comforting warmth now feels like it's suffocating me. "No. That's not why we asked you guys to come. But before we get into anything, will both of you promise not to get mad... or start asking questions or yelling before we're done? I promise when we're done telling you everything we know, we will answer any questions either of you may have." Stiles says putting down his silverware. "For fuck's sake, Stiles. What did you get yourself into now?" Andrew says. My mother grabs Andrew's hand and holds it in her lap before saying, "We promise. Go ahead." I debate letting Stiles start but I would rather him finish... "So you remember that party, you know... the one where we told you we saw a girl being pushed from the waterfall? You told us we were hallucinating it, but that just didn't make sense to me. To us." I pause and look toward Stiles. He wraps his rough hands around my thigh, which gives me the courage to continue. "I was having these weird nightmares, and sometimes they would happen when I wasn't even sleeping. I just — I knew it wasn't a hallucination. I knew that it actually happened. So we decided to do an investigation of our own. We made a deal that if we couldn't find anything we'd drop it, but that's not what happened."
  Stiles takes off from there going into detail about everything we knew, even pulling out pictures of our investigation board through the stages of information that we had. As he was explaining everything my nerves calmed enough for me to eat a few bites of my chicken, and a few bites of his amazing potatoes. Making me wish I had ordered an adult meal... Neither of our parents were showing much emotion... or much of anything when Stiles finished. When we had told them everything we knew for a fact was true. "I'm sorry we broke into your office and went behind both of your backs. We weren't trying to be deceitful, I just wanted to have as many facts as possible before we brought anything to you." I say without looking up from my plate. "What you did — what you guys both did was dangerous. Raken isn't someone to be messed with — the entire Blake family. I shouldn't have let you be friends with Chase in the first place. I knew I should have stopped it then—" My mother stops Andrew by placing her hand on his chest. "Look, we understand why you guys didn't tell us from the beginning. But like Andrew said... It was extremely dangerous. But we believe you, and we will do what we can with the information you provided us tonight. You guys shouldn't worry about this anymore okay? I'm not sure who you've trusted with this information but you cannot tell anyone else, okay? Promise me." Stiles and I both nod our heads like two little kids who got caught red handed with their hands in the cookie jar. We knew it was dangerous, we knew that it could be life threatening. We did leave out the small detail of us getting chased by the guy with the big knife though.
  My mother nods her head, "okay I don't think any of us can stomach another bite. We'll get the bill on the way out, and we'll see you back at home okay?" As if our word privileges got taken away from us we both nod our heads again, not daring to speak another word. With that they both stand from the table and make their way to the front of the restaurant. We watch them walk to their car before we step outside, I think we're both afraid of what Andrew will do or say if he sees us again before calming down. Once in the safety of the Jeep, I look over to Stiles. "Do you think we did the right thing? Not for ourselves... but for her? Do you think by telling them this, it will somehow help find her?" He's quiet for a few minutes before he responds, "Honestly? I don't know. I think we did the best we could do with the situation that was handed to us. It's hard to believe it was only two months ago that this happened... It feels like we've been dealing with this for years. I'm just glad that the weight has been lifted off my shoulders, and we can finally relax." He finishes. "Yeah you're right. When we get back — I'll take the test okay. I'm sorry I gave you so much shit about it earlier." I blew out a breath I hadn't realized I'd been holding since he asked me to take it. He slowly leans his body across the empty space between us and gently brushes his lips across mine. "I love you Erin, no matter what the outcome of the test is... nothing will change that." He gently kisses my forehead — which is becoming my favorite kiss from him, and begins our long journey home.
  I don't know if I dozed off, or if I just had my eyes closed for a long time. I open my eyes and the fog that was so minimal earlier is taking over all my sight. "How long until we're home?" I whisper not wanting to startle him. "Um, I think we still have around twenty five minutes. This fog is making it take longer to get home, I can't see ten feet in front of me." His eyes never move from the road. I look out my window back to the side mirror, and my heart stops. I have to blink a couple of times — not sure if it's from the actual fog or the fogginess of my eyes. But it wasn't my sight or my mind messing with me, the same bright circular headlights are behind us. The same ones as before we got to the restaurant. I try to make words come out but they get jumbled in my throat, that's impossible. The only way that those could be the same headlights... is if someone were following us. "Stiles — how long has that car been behind us?" The words come out shaky, so hoarse that I don't sound like myself. "Um, a few minutes after we left the restaurant. Why?" I feel my heart beating faster and faster in my chest, I know this isn't a coincidence. It can't be. "Stiles... I'm not trying to freak you out or myself out... but I saw those exact headlights behind us on the way there. Seeing Raken today — at the police station, I don't think this is a coincidence. Can you drive a little faster? Take a turn, to see if they're following us?" I put my trembling hands under my thighs in an attempt to control them. "Uh— the only turn I could take is a dirt road, and it would be taking us opposite of home. But yeah — yes, I'll take it. It's right up here." A few minutes pass with the only sound in the entire car is my heart thumping in my chest. Finally he takes the left turn and I completely turn around in my seat to see if the car follows, a few seconds pass and I don't see any headlights. Right when I'm about to let air back into my lungs... the bright circular headlights appear behind us.
  "Go. Stiles go!" I scream. He slams his foot on the gas but the dirt road with no lights isn't making it any easier to see with this fog. "Call my dad." He says he's now sitting on the edge of his seat. I nod my head, and pull my phone out of my pocket and click on Andrew's name. The line doesn't even ring, I pull my phone back and my heart stops again for the second time in five minutes. "Stiles, I don't have any reception. I can't make a call." I start taking deep breaths and against better judgment turn around and see the car inching closer and closer to us. "Well, I guess we'll just have to outrun them."